'Womb For Rent' Woman Is Well Known To Police

OTHER NEWS TO NOTE - SOUTH

November 19, 1993

HOUSTON — A would-be surrogate mother who used a billboard to advertise her ''womb for rent'' has a history of run-ins with the law including a federal indictment, a newspaper said Thursday. Whitney Neuhaus, 43, is the target of an FBI investigation, the Houston Chronicle reported. Last week she put the message ''Womb for Rent'' on a billboard along Houston's Southwest Freeway, prompting a flood of national publicity. In a New Orleans court, she faces four federal mail-fraud charges and a single count of money laundering. Prosecutors say she double-billed insurance companies through a weight-loss clinic she operated, then laundered the money through a bank in Massachusetts, using one of her aliases. Trial begins Dec. 6. In 1983, she was arrested in the shooting death of her first husband. Using a battered-wife defense, she avoided prosecution, New Orleans authorities told the paper.